Mana Whaikaha sys­tem trial starts

Hav­ing your voice heard on what af­fects your life is a ba­sic hu­man right.

That is why I am proud the MidCen­tral DHB re­gion is the first to trial Mana Whaikaha — a new sup­port sys­tem that gives those liv­ing with im­pair­ments and their fam­i­lies, the abil­ity to shape their own fu­ture.

Thanks to this Gov­ern­ment in­vest­ing over $21 mil­lion, Mana Whaikaha Kaitu¯ hono will help dis­abled wha¯ nau across the Manawatu¯ , Horowhenua,

O¯ taki and Tararua dis­tricts, ex­pe­ri­ence more op­tions, more flex­i­bil­ity, more con­trol, and a bet­ter stan­dard of health.

On top of this, all feed­back re­ceived through Mana Whaikaha will help de­velop our new dis­abil­ity sup­port sys­tem. Mean­ing our rohe will ac­tively help im­prove the stan­dard of liv­ing for thou­sands New Zealan­ders — in­clud­ing the 26 per cent of Ma¯ ori who iden­ti­fied as dis­abled in 2013 — and that’s fan­tas­tic.

Speak­ing of di­ver­sity, I want to tau­toko the ef­forts of MaLGRA, the Manawatu¯ gay and les­bian rights group, for cre­at­ing our city’s ‘Rain­bow Cross­ing’ on Ge­orge St.

This land­mark shows lo­cal takata¯ pui, their com­mu­nity has their back.

For our part, the coali­tion Gov­ern­ment re­cently re­moved the caps on the num­ber of gen­der af­fir­ma­tion surg­eries in New Zealand and pro­gressed our pi­lot pro­gramme for free men­tal health coun­selling for 18 to 25-year-olds.

This is a long over­due ini­tia­tive for our ran­gatahi — es­pe­cially those strug­gling with their sex­u­al­ity or gen­der iden­tity.

I am com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing young New Zealan­ders in our rohe know where the front door to help is when needed, and that ac­cess to that help is not re­stricted by their in­come level or that of their par­ents.

The next gen­er­a­tion is also the fo­cus of Te Waru o Noema, cur­rently cel­e­brat­ing 100 years of the vi­sion of Tahupo¯ tiki Wiremu Ra¯ tana at Ra¯ tana Pa¯ .

My friends, wha¯ nau and I have been count­ing down to in­spir­ing our tamariki to ex­plore the full po­ten­tial of the fu­ture of Ra¯ tana.

In host­ing Prime Min­is­ter Jacinda Ardern and my Labour Ma¯ ori Cau­cus col­leagues over the next few days, I will be show­ing them how Ra¯ tana Ran­gatahi Vil­lage proves it is a chal­lenge they’re ready to ac­cept.

With more new par­ents ben­e­fit­ing from our Best Start Credit ev­ery day, I want to ac­knowl­edge the first birth­day of this coali­tion Gov­ern­ment.

Your vote helped make all the im­prove­ments we’ve made to­wards a bet­ter, fairer Aotearoa pos­si­ble.

So thank YOU Te Tai Haua¯ uru. With your help, we will keep do­ing this.